Heroic Blade Lord Ta'yak 10M Issues

Hey all. Our guild started HM Blade Lord last night and went in thinking it would be fairly simple to down quickly but it turned out to be quite the opposite scenario and we only made it to Phase 2 once realistically.

For the most part we followed our normal strategy with regards to Unseen Strike etc. but we were dying to old mechanics.

We generally pull the boss a little into the left corridor so tornado placement is ok throughout the duration.

With Unseen Strike, we all stack on the tank and it seems sometimes certain people still don't get hit (I have read it is better to stack on the walls and have the target facing a specific way?)

People with Windstep do not stack.

My main concern is that we are 3 healing this fight and the healers are still complaining that they are going OOM but from everything I can see, it should be possible to two heal this fight and with 3 healing it should be easy in regards to that.

It doesn't look like people are taking unnecessary damage and are only taking unavoidable damage that is simply part of the fight.

There were a few attempts at the start that were rough with Tempest but that was solved very quickly. It did get a little cleaner towards the end but the healers say they don't feel they can 2 heal it and with 3 we're still having issues... I don't think we should. Our HPally keeps dying from Windstep also and says it is ticking harder but the average tick is only 147K. In the end we pulled our mage out due to his inability to cast and move since we are 3 healing it and need all the DPS we can get.

First issue I see is you could relieve the stress on the wind step debuff a lot but using your Hand of Protections and Divine Shields. With the clemency talent, you could be reducing the need to heal through the debuff by a total of 6 times. I'm fairly sure mages can ice block out of it but not 100%. All of these will completely negate the windstep debuff for the 30 second duration by taking it off the target entirely.

With unseen strike, I'd advise stacking on the target rather than the tank so the target doesn't need to move around and people have more time to be better positioned behind him from where the boss was facing. If you're going from left to right, have the boss always facing the right so people can stack tightly but still mostly in that direction. My only advice on targets not getting hit is stack tight.

People with windstep should probably stack on the unseen strike, else everyone else takes a fair amount more damage. The way to do this is to save your Hand of Protections/Divine Shield/Iceblock when he is about to unseen strike since he alternates that with tempest. It's a lot easier to keep the windstep target alive during tempest than unseen strike. Otherwise, the only option is to pop some cooldowns but I would still advise the windstep debuff target stacking. The debuff is also a physical debuff and therefore magic reduction cooldowns don't work on it, I believe.

3 healing the fight is not a big deal I think especially if you're doing it for the first time and the DPS is fine. Your DPS is reasonable so it might not be a bad idea to 3 heal it. Although 3 healing it allows a little room for error, this is one of those fights which allows very little room for error. the windstep should not be ticking harder on the holy paladin, in fact my world of logs shows me taking less damage from the ticks probably due to me wearing plate armor. For when your HoP/DS/IB cooldowns go down, the hpaly can also spec into 20% reduction from physical damage with divine protection to help out if he gets it.

My advice to smooth things out is have one person dedicated to healing the windstep debuff. I did it in my raid because I also could keep track of the Hand of Protection uses. Along with monk and discipline priest who are all not super great at running and healing, I could keep the windstep target healed while running simple with holy shock/eternal flame or word of glory. One problem we had here was when the windstep target ran out of my range during tempest but this can be coordinated. We also stacked ranged near the walls so the tornadoes weren't all over the place.

your disc should absolutely destroy p1, and you should also be able to 2 heal it. 2 healing actually makes it easier in my opinion because you are spending less time above 30% getting wind steps (he stops wind stepping at 30%).

put a tank in each group and make sure everyone in the raid is no further than 30 yards away from the tanks so the priest can easily and reliably PoH off the tanks to get a spirit shell off before every unseen. even with several people missing unseen, spirit shell makes the mechanic laughable. your disc can also spirit shell going into p2 to negate most of the damage you take during the transition, as well as at 12-13% before you have to run back to the other side.

do not be discouraged if you have raider deaths, it is quite possible and easy to finish the fight with 5 or less as long as you have enough heals and people stay calm.

if your pally has a good dps set i recommend he be the one to switch to dps in a 2 heal scenario, as they are very poor at healing on the run. disc will make p1 laughable, and rsham will make p2 much easier combined with the absorbs from the disc. rsham have several tools they can use to heal on each run (healing tide with totemic projection, ascendance + spiritwalker's grace).

One pally should take clemency for the double BoP, one pally should take Hand of Purity and use it on the wind step target during every blade tempest to negate the dot damage while the raid is mobile. your mage should be using greater invis to instantly drop wind step any time it lands on him (2m cd i think?).

As monikasun said, in a 2 heal set up one person should be focusing on the tanks and the other on the wind step target. healing wind step is quite taxing, but with a little good RNG you should be able to negate several of them with the comp that you're running.

We 3-healed our first few kills. We 2-heal it now just because we can; 3-heal is probably still easier.

Your raid DPS looks pretty low though. You're pushing ~380k raid DPS while we pushed 420k raid DPS on our early kills and enrage was pretty tight. We blow hero at the start of the fight as soon as the boss is in position. Make sure everyone prepots. Also, your tank damage is super low. Tank damage is important, especially in heroics. Also, your shaman needs to pull more hps so your disc can just smite spam and Spirit Shell in p1. You shouldn't need 3 full healers until p2.

Utilize double BoP from both your pallies. Your damage taken from Wind Step is 4x+ what ours was with 2 pallies. Use BoP. It's amazing on this fight. Make sure more than 1 person isn't getting hit too. If anyone is a Dwarf, I'm pretty sure Stoneform will remove the bleed as well.

For Unseen Strike, we all just stack in the middle where the tanks were. It's the ranged's responsibility to get there. We usually have a Spirit Shell or some other raid CD for every one. As a rogue, most of the time I don't even take damage from it because absorbs+Feint.

With 2 pallies, this fight should be a breeze. We recently recruited 2 after it was already on farm and the fight became significantly easier. 2-heal could be doable for a first kill since you do have 2 pallies.